An exhibition by Montreal and Brooklyn-based artist j.p.mot (Jean-Pierre Mot) as part of the Nguyen Wahed basement laboratory, whose multidisciplinary practice transforms the discarded materials of everyday consumption into speculative landscapes of memory, labor, and cultural identity. These objects—designed to circulate briefly before disappearing into waste streams—become the raw material for installations that investigate the fragile relationship between global capitalism and local culture. At the center of Mot's laboratory at Nguyen Wahed is a deceptively simple question: What does a brand leave behind?
This same attention to research and displacement shaped Et sa pulpe!; Drawing from research conducted in 2026 at the Cité internationale de la langue française situated in Villers-Cotterêts (France) the exhibition brought into dialogue seemingly distant universes — Japanese animation adaptation and the work of Alexandre Dumas, the three musketeers; which in turn was brought into the francophone market in Canada — to reveal shared narratives of heroes seeking recognition, and the distortions those narratives undergo across time, context, translation and adaptation. At the heart of the installation, a prototype of kinetic sculpture introduced a minimal yet insistent temporality: two images alternating like a rudimentary GIF, their repetitive, unresolved movement staging a form of identity held in suspension.
Working with found packaging gathered from supermarkets, kitchens, industrial sites, and abandoned production facilities, Mot constructs environments through kinetic mechanisms, print processes, and sculptural interventions, these familiar objects become archaeological fragments of contemporary life. Food serves as a recurring point of entry into the work. For Mot, food is where culture becomes visible—where histories of migration, labor, aspiration, and identity are condensed into ordinary consumer objects.
Jean-Pierre Mot (b.1982, Montreal, Canada) holds an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University and has exhibited internationally across Canada, the United States, Mexico, France, Iceland, Thailand, Singapore, China, and Qatar. He received several support from the Canada Art Council, the Quebec Art and Letter Council, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts. In 2024, he received the inaugural Polygone Award in Visual Arts from the Conseil des arts de Montréal, was a resident at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel, and in 2026 received support from the Modern Language Association development fund. His recent activities include solo shows at the NARS Foundation Project Space in Brooklyn, ARPRIM centre d'essai en art imprimé in Montréal, Le Labo Media Art Center in Toronto, and a two-month residency at Cité Internationale de la Langue Française.
Supported by: Conseil des Arts et Lettres du Québec, Cité Internationale de la Langue Française, Modern Language Association